


Blood, Sweat, Magic.

by Hatsepsut



Series: Not Your Happy Ending [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Drama, F/M, Sacrifice, Templars, Threat of Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-18 01:06:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3550385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hatsepsut/pseuds/Hatsepsut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke is on the run with his beloved Merrill for months; but this was going to happen soonere or later, the templars would one day catch up to them. What would two desperate lovers do to save each other?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood, Sweat, Magic.

They had been running for months, and were getting pretty good at evading the templars. Merrill’s skills –as a Dalish- had proven to be invaluable. Hawke smiled to himself, thinking about it. If it had been just him, the templars wouldn’t even have to hunt him down; he’d have eaten some kind of poisonous mushroom or frozen his ass out in the wilderness. They would have come across him one day, dead, and laugh at what a pathetic end the Champion of Kirkwall had found.

Thank the Maker for Merrill. His little Dalish elf had an unnerving sixth sense to find the best route through the forests, to secure them food without even seeming to try, to find the most protected and secure camping site for them to rest. She had proven invaluable- and not just for her survival skills. She was warmth and love and acceptance personified- in a world that was out to get him, she was the one person that looked at him with love and trust in those huge eyes of hers, that accepted him wholeheartedly, that did her best to cheer him up and keep him positive.

He looked up to the rich canopy over his head, a small smile curling his mouth. She had gone to the small stream to wash up. The smile grew a bit larger, a bit smug, as he thought of what he had been doing to her all night to warrant her dipping into a cold stream. He sigh contentedly. His petite elf was a wonder, a ray of sunshine that hunted away any pensive thoughts, a warm fountain of everlasting love that warmed his heart. She was also a sexy little kitten in bed and Hawke couldn’t get enough of her. The day he had taken that adorable girl as his wife had been the best on his life, he thought as he thumbed the ring around his finger. The Chantry Sister in that tiny Fereldan village had been shocked- he didn’t give a fuck. Merrill was his, his other half, his _better_ half. He was a better person with her beside him...he was happy, even hunted, even on the run.

He was lost in those thoughts, feeling contented and at peace- a dangerous thing, because when the templars burst into the clearing...he didn’t have the presence of mind to react. He didn’t have time to do anything before he was silenced be a templar smite, his magic lost, other than cry out.

“Merrill! Templars! RUN!”

* * *

Merrill burst into the clearing, shooting bolts out of her staff, to come to a halt abruptly. Her staff lowered, and she gasped.

“Gabriel!” she cried out at the sight of her husband, bound, on his knees, a templar sword pushing his chin high.

“Merrill,” Hawke’s eyes found hers, despair written in them. “Baby, why did you come back?”

A templar approached her, terrifying behind his mask. “Surrender,” he commanded her, “or he dies.”

“Leave her alone, you bastard,” Hawke shouted. “It’s me you want! She has nothing to do with all this!”

The templar barely looked in his direction. “Oh, ho, ho,” he sneered at Hawke. “So this tasty little morsel is yours?” he exchanged a look with two other templars, who started flanking Merrill. Her eyes darted from one to the other, her staff held in front of her. Hawke’s eyes were huge with horror and she belatedly grasped the sneering, lewd tone in the templars voice. She recoiled, searching frantically for some opening, some way for both her and Hawke to escape. She was an optimistic, cheerful person, but not naïve. She knew what they planned to do to her, what they intended to have Hawke watch, and she was not going to allow it. For _his_ sake more than hers.

“I bet she spreads those legs pretty wide, doesn’t she, Champion?” the templar that was holding his sword across Hawke’s neck leaned in to sneer in his ear. “Is she a screamer? Will she scream for us?”

Hawke went as still as a statue. “If you fucking touch even a hair on her head...” his voice was tight, thin, dangerous.

“Spare me, son,” the templar drew his head back by his hair, making the mage stretch his neck even further on the sword. “It’s not like you can stop us.”

Hawke’s eyes focused on Merrill again- time froze as their gazes caught and held. A wealth of emotion: despair, fear, anger. Love, tenderness, regret. _Go_ , his eyes told her. _Save yourself_. _I won't leave you_ , her eyes answered. _I’ll never leave you_.

In a flash, Merrill’s decision was made; she dropped her staff, and drew a dagger instead, then mouthing ‘I’m sorry’ to Hawke, she slit her wrist.

* * *

It had been years since she’d used her blood magic. Hawke had made her promise never to use it again, because he was afraid of losing her to some demon. Unable to convince him she had it under control, in the end she’d relented and promised- and she had kept her word.  The monstrosity that Orsino had turned into during the Battle of the Gallows drove the point home more poignantly- Hawke was right. Blood magic was dangerous. It could corrupt and twist even the most gentle of souls, and she had been naïve and arrogant to have thought she might be the exception.

She had forgotten the rush of power, the intoxicating surge of it, the way the very fabric of the Beyond shivered and bent around a mage using their own blood to fuel their magic. This was not the gentle, warm trickle of mana through your body- this was the dark, life-giving and life-taking stream of ichor that fuelled the world. Murky, dangerous, intoxicating. It was the very life-stream of Creation one tapped into when using their own life-force to fuel their magic, and Merrill revelled in it now, let it feed her rage and fear at being helpless in the templars grasp.

A quick spell- barely any power spent, barely any words spoken- and they were hers, thralls under her command.

“Release him,” she commanded the templar that was holding Hawke, and she saw her husband rise to his feet, as the templar just stood there, swaying form side to side with a blank look on his face. Hawke used the discarded sword to kill the man with a swift, merciful blow. Blood spilt in a geyser, and Merrill’s eyes darkened. Blood. More blood. More power.

A voice whispered in her brain, pleaded, asked for the right to enter. She shook it off, then twirled her staff on the two templars that had fallen to their knees, one to her right, one to her left. Only the man that had commanded her to surrender was still standing, fighting her control spell, but he seemed to be wavering. Hawke’s sword stabbed him from behind, and with a gasp, and a fountain of blood that sprayed Merrill straight in the face, he also collapsed.

“Let me in,” the voice - mellifluous, soft, cajoling- insisted in her head, purring at the spilt blood. “Let me in, and you can have anything you want.”

But Merrill didn’t need anything other than to keep the man who was now frantically embracing her safe. She closed her eyes on a sigh as Gabriel’s strong arms wrapped around her and squeezed to the point of making her ribs protest. He was safe. Hawke was safe. Creators, she had been so scared.

“My love,” Hawke was kissing her face, running his hands all over her to make sure she was safe. “My love...Merrill...Maker, I was so scared. Why did you come back? You should have left. Damn it, Merrill!”

She smiled at him, still battling with the voice in her head, and lay her head on his shoulder. That’s when she saw them, three more templars. In a blink of an eye, she saw, and her blood froze in her veins. One of them was releasing am arrow- as in slow motion, she saw it fly, slashing through the air...and straight into Hawke’s back.

The tall human in her arms cried out as the arrow hit- Merrill would never forget the sound, that sickening thud followed by the sound of tearing flesh- then he tried to take a few deep breaths. They both looked down together, both of them shocked. The arrow was protruding from the spot on Hawke’s chest underneath which his heart was, and Merrill felt a paralyzing wave of fear freeze her body to the very bone, as Hawke slipped to his knees, then toppled to the side, blood bubbling from his mouth.

“Hawke!” She cried out, trying in vain to stem the flow of blood. His heart faltered under her hands. Thud-dub, thud-dub, thud-dub...then slower...thud....dub...then fainter...thud...

“Emma lath...don’t leave me!” she sobbed. “Gabriel! Stay with me, my love.”

A breath gargled in his throat, then his eyes closed.

“Let me in,” the voice said again in her head, “and I’ll save him.”

She wiped her tears with a hand soaked in Hawke’s blood. “Do you promise?” she asked the voice. “Can you save him?”

The templars were just at the end of the clearing, one of them cheering that he’d got Hawke, and shouting orders to the others to get the elf. “Can you?” she asked the voice frantically.

“Let me in,” the voice crooned again, but with a hidden note of authority –an triumph-in its tone.

“Save him first,” Merrill sighed, resigned to her fate. The first of the templars was almost upon her, jumping over a prone log, his sword drawn. “Save Hawke, and you can enter.”

She watched as the templar finally reached her, from her position straddling her husband, her hands trying to stem the flow of blood around the arrow. A wave of energy pulsed from between her clenched hands; it shot inside Hawke, who gasped, his eyes opening wide.

“Enter,” she told the demon, then closed her eyes and surrendered.

* * *

Hawke’s senses were reeling, agonising pain shooting through his every cell, centred in his chest. He opened his eyes with herculean effort. His vision was foggy, out of focus, and he struggled to concentrate, blinked hard a couple of times, shook his head to clear it. Looking down to see the arrow tip still protruding from his body he wondered why he wasn’t dead. He distinctly remembered his body shutting down, the last thoughts he had fading into a tunnel of light. He distinctly remembered Merrill crying over him, feeling sorrow that he was going to leave her, wanting to talk to her but being unable to do anything but just lay there and feel his own sense of self-awareness slipping. Why wasn’t he dead?

He grabbed the end of the arrow and pulled, a cream escaping him as it slid out of his body; there had never been anything as agonising as feeling the long shaft of the arrow slide through his heart. And yet, he still wasn’t dead. He watched in awe as the skin closed around the wound and then looked at the arrow in disbelief. Was he dreaming?

Sound returned to his ears with a roar, and then he heard an inhuman, hideous voice, heard the frantic, desperate yelling of the templars. His eyes focused and then...he wished he _had_ died.

There was an abomination in the clearing, a monstrous, horrifying creature, taller than the tallest man, grotesque as only a creature that looked to be a person turned inside out could be. But there was something sickening familiar about this one, something that chilled Hawke to the very recesses of his soul: one ear, one perfectly pointed ear, dainty, unbearably adorable. It had survived the transformation, and Hawke knew that ear. He had kissed it so many times, had whispered sweet nothings in it, had moaned in it in the throes of passion, had even pinched it playfully in the midst of an argument to get his point across.

“Merrill...” he gasped. “Sweet Maker. Merrill. Oh, my heart! What have you done?”

The abomination’s claws sliced through one of the templars, guts and blood flying everywhere, and Hawke closed his eyes to keep the searing, blinding tears in. His sweet Merrill...a monster. An abomination. Maker.

Having dealt with demons himself, and having just seen the evidence of his ‘miraculous’ recovery, he could swear that his own life was what Merrill had bargained for. He felt such agonising pain go through his heart  that it was like a thousand arrows had suddenly pierced it.  He wiped his tears, debating what he should do as one of the templars dealt a crippling blow to Merrill...no, not Merrill, to the creature.

His eyes hardening, he rose to his feet, wobbling for a few moments, then finding his balance with nothing more than determination. He readied a freezing spell, and waited for the right opportunity. Maker knew, Merrill wouldn’t want him to let her live on like this, she would be appalled at the loss of life the crazed, hideous creature she had been turned on would cause. But that ear...that perfect ear. It mocked him, paralysed him, caused him doubt. If her ear had survived, couldn’t something else have remained of her inside this monster? Could she be saved? He had heard of instances where Circle mages had gone into the Fade to release possessed mages; maybe he could do that himself?

Doubt made him falter, and once the last templar fell dead, he just stood there, looking at the monster his wife had turned into, his sweet Merrill, his lovely little elf. When the creature turned on him, at first he continued standing there, frozen in time, watching a bulk of twisted and corrupted flesh rush towards him. He only found himself when those monstrous claws swiped at him, jumping out of the way at the very last moment.

From there on, it was a matter of instinct taking over; an ice prison spell first, the repeated fire blasts, then ice again, then mind blast, until the thing fell dead.

Hawke slumped to his knees looking at nothing but that pointy ear, the only thing of his wife remaining. A voice spoke to him in his voice, soft, melodious. “Let me in,” it said, “And I can turn back to how she was.”

“SCREW YOU!” Hawke threw his head back and raged, more at himself and the momentary temptation he’d felt than at the voice itself. “Get out of my head! Screw you! I won’t let you take me as well! I won’t!”

He fell forward, crying softly, cursing. “Merrill...” the sound was agonised, the pain of a soul that has just lost its soul mate, the only thing that gave it purpose. “Merrill.”

His hand touched that dainty ear, his fingers shaking wildly. One long lingering caress, a calloused digit tracing the elegant curve; a small scar there, that he knew so well, from when she had decided to pierce her ears only to have him playing with the little golden hoop so much that she had taken the thing off, embarrassed with how much his touch affected her. He closed his eyes not to see it anymore, not to see those happy, carefree memories that were shredding his heart in pieces. Heaving breaths rocked his frame, a scream started building in his throat, but only came out as a keening cry, a mournful moan.

And then he covered his face and did something no one had ever done before:

He cried over the dead body of an abomination.

 


End file.
